


A Song of Thunder and Comfort

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Post-Canon, Singing, Storms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-09 01:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4328742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Jaime discovers Brienne is afraid of thunder and reacts accordingly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Song of Thunder and Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> Fluff all the way. I own nothing.

Thunder cracked like ships being wrecked and forests felled. The straw roof of the cottage seemed to rustle, its stone walls to shift and sigh. Rain continued to sough outside, great sheets of it, banners unfurled before the tossing winds. 

The rain, the thunder, and the odd bolt of lightning had been chasing each other since just after sundown. Now, deep into the hour of ghosts, the wind tore at the single window and flung its shutters open, sending sprays of rain into the cottage, nearly as far as the bed.

“Ow! Lady Coldhands!” Jaime exclaimed as Brienne fumbled at the covers and dove under, making the bedframe groan and crack. She’d lain still as a mouse for most of the night, and jumped up to struggle with the broken shutter, jamming it shut and returning to bed bedewed in cold rain. 

Brienne only snorted in response and burrowed under the covers, drawing them up to cover her damp hair. She then attempted to pull Jaime as well as her pillow over her head.

“Ahem, Brienne?”

Jaime found himself manhandled into a twisted position on the straw-stuffed mattress. His stump was thrown up over Brienne’s head, and her chilled nose pressed against his chest. Brienne uttered a tiny sound, almost a whimper. 

Thunder cracked and rolled as though the sky were breaking apart directly above their cottage. Brienne’s shoulders twitched as she tried to press herself even closer to Jaime.

“Bri-e-en-ne,” Jaime sing-songed in fast-dawning delight. “Wench, you’ve failed to mention that you’re afraid of thunder.”

“‘M not,” came the surly response, muffled by flesh and covers.

“I don’t believe it. This fearless warrior, daughter of the Stormlands, protector of maidens’ virtue and deliverer of Starks, reduced to a shivering mess of flesh and bedclothes by a little rainstorm…” 

“Jaime,” Brienne complained, surfacing from the covers. “I’ve barely slept since the storm began. Might you possibly tease me on the morn?” 

She yelped and retreated at another, even louder crack of thunder. 

Jaime considered her shape in the dark. He grinned because Brienne could not see, and cleared his throat. 

“The lord came a-riding upon a rainy day, hey-nonny, hey-nonny, hey-nonny-hey,” he began to croon in what he roughly estimated was Brienne’s ear, somewhere under the covers. 

Brienne groaned almost as loudly as the thunder.

Jaime finished the first stanza of “The False and the Fair” before he segued into “Lord Harte Rode Out on a Rainy Day,” “The Mother’s Tears,” and “When Willum’s Wife Was Wet.” His voice grew stronger and louder with every successive song. 

Jaime knew he couldn’t carry a tune, but he made up for lack of skill with enthusiasm and lustiness. By the time he altered the last song’s words to make it more obviously bawdy than it already was (“When Willum did come home at last, all his men had sticky mouths!”), Jaime was fairly braying to rival the thunder.

Since the storm showed no signs of wearing itself out, Jaime reached back to his memories of time spent among soldiers and launched into a very loud medley of the bawdiest tunes he knew, adjusting their words to suit the rainy night. 

From “Her Little Flower” (which got rained upon copiously), he made stately progress through “Milady’s Supper” (interrupted by a rainstorm), to the adventures of Meggett the merry maid, who got fucked in every situation involving water Jaime could scrounge up, even if it didn’t always rhyme. He avoided “Fifty-four Tuns” and “A Cask of Ale,” suspecting that Brienne would endure bawdy drinking songs beloved by Jaime’s late goodbrother, the unlamented king, no better than Jaime would enjoy singing them.

Brienne groaned and pleaded for mercy, then shook with laughter in helpless near-surrender, then threatened to throw Jaime out of the cottage to sleep in the rain if he started singing the song about the bear. 

While Jaime continued to sing and attempt with his one hand to find enough of Brienne under the covers to pinch or tickle, and she retaliated for the pinching and complained about his choice of song, the wind died down and the thunder moved to the east almost without either of them noticing. The rain still bucketed down, and the night seemed to be shaking itself out like a great, soaked cloak. 

Jaime fell silent just long enough for the departing thunder, dragging its kettledrums behind its baggage train, to register with Brienne. As soon as she’d uttered a small, questioning noise of relief and poked her nose out of the covers, Jaime started in on his last song.

“Six maids there were in a spring-fed pool, six maids, six maids! They bathed and sang, and the lads did drool, six maids, six maids!”

“That is not how it goes,” Brienne said, but she was listening closely. 

He sang more softly now, definitely not the words which accompanied the sentimental tune. “The rain did fall on the six wet maids, so wet, so wet! My lady slept and the thunder fled, so wet, so wet…”

Brienne huffed and burrowed under the covers again, settling herself comfortably against Jaime rather than seeking shelter. He could feel her smile on his skin. Her arm snaked around Jaime to give his hip a quick, fond squeeze. The night continued dark and full of rain, like the whisper of many ghosts amassed around the cottage. Just a lullaby to those abed within.

**Author's Note:**

> All the song titles and subjects are canon, as are the lines from “The False and the Fair” and the opening line of “Six Maids in a Pool,” which Jaime remembers was his and Brienne’s song right from the start.


End file.
